Corporate website design

One site, many audiences

The defining challenge of corporate design is serving several audiences without confusing any of them. A prospective customer wants to understand what you offer; a job seeker wants roles and culture; a journalist wants press contacts and facts. If the homepage tries to speak to all of them equally, it speaks clearly to none.

We map each audience's main task and give it a clear route from the homepage and navigation, while keeping the main message aimed at the most important audience, usually customers.

Designing for governance

Corporate sites rarely fail on launch day. They fail over the following years, as different departments add pages without a shared structure or style. Governance prevents this: clear rules on who owns each section, who can publish and how changes are approved.

We design with governance in mind, using a component library that limits layouts to approved patterns, and we recommend editing roles that match your approval process.

Common corporate website sections

Requirements corporate sites usually carry

Managing many stakeholders

Corporate projects involve more people, and more opinions, than most. Without structure, feedback becomes contradictory and decisions stall. We agree a single point of contact, a small group that approves designs and a clear sequence of review stages.

Feedback from wider teams is gathered at defined points and consolidated before it reaches the design, so the project keeps moving and decisions are recorded.

Accessibility as a requirement

Many organisations have accessibility obligations, and all benefit from websites that work for everyone. We design to WCAG 2.2 criteria that design influences, including colour contrast, readable type, visible focus states and logical heading structure, and test with keyboard navigation before launch.

Accessibility is easiest when it is designed in from the start; retrofitting it later costs more and is rarely as thorough.

A content model for growth

Corporate sites grow through news, case studies, locations and roles. Each of these is a content type with consistent fields: a case study has a client sector, challenge and outcome; a role has location and closing date. Defining these types up front means editors fill in structured fields rather than designing pages, and listings, filters and related links work automatically.

A clear content model also makes future redesigns easier, because content is stored separately from the layout that presents it.

How a corporate website project runs

1. 01

   Discovery

   Audiences, stakeholders, governance and existing content reviewed.

   Output: Requirements and content inventory

2. 02

   Structure

   Sitemap, content types and audience routes agreed.

   Output: Approved structure

3. 03

   Design system

   Brand applied to components and key page types, tested for accessibility.

   Output: Component library

4. 04

   Build and migrate

   Templates built, content migrated, editors trained.

   Output: Site ready for sign-off

5. 05

   Launch

   Redirects, final checks and handover documentation.

   Output: Live site with governance in place